Update:Behind the Scenes - February 2016
Our quest this month is all about Nomad, and he has been a very, very, naughty man... You'll find yourself in the Underworld, leading an army of the undead, reuniting with old friends thought lost to Death's touch, and laying siege to Nomad's fortress as you try to stop another of his power-hungry schemes. Be prepared for one of the toughest fights yet, making your first experiences with Nomad feel like a walk in the park. The rewards are pretty sexy too, especially the new devices, including one that has the power to increase the XP you earn for teleporting Urns. Requiring "Dishonour Among Thieves" and "The Mighty Fall" to complete, this continuing storyline was one of the lore highlights of last year and is a critical part of the 6th age. It is the first of four quests that will bring about the conclusion of Sliske's Countdown... so get involved! Requirements RuneScape members only You must have completed the quests '"Dishonour Among Thieves", '''"The Mighty Fall", "The Void Stares Back", "Nomad's Requiem", "Throne of Miscellania" and "Heart of Stone."'' You must have '''Level 75' in the following skills: Woodcutting. Mining. Construction.'' A '''high combat-level' and good gear are highly recommended.'' Speaking of Sliske, he's as hungry for attention as always and is slamming down his intentions for all to see. In a cruel parody of the Edicts of Guthix, the god he killed at the end of the 5th age, he's embedded a massive sword in the centre of the Grand Exchange, acting as a giant scoreboard for tracking the antics of the gods. To get your attention, he's spread "Sliskelion" pieces around the game-world. These can be earned while you train, and you can cash them in at the sword for some decent XP rewards. The sword will be removed at the conclusion of his vicious game, so don't hang about in finding those elusive pieces! The 26th of February is a great time of year to commit to an entire weekend of playing RuneScape. It's cold and windy outside for most of us, there are great opportunities in game to make money for a fantastic charity, and a double XP weekend to enjoy! It's the perfect time to get in game! The double XP boost will last all weekend, and during the week we'll have our "Time to Train" promotion running, filling Treasure Hunter with all the useful training and skilling items you love to win. Alongside the double XP weekend, we'll be running GameBlast, a 24-hour livestream event, entertaining you with a digital cacophony of activity, with special guests, famous streamers, challenges, crazy events and generally making a fool of ourselves. Gameblast is all about raising money for Special Effect - an amazing charity who help people with disabilities to enjoy playing games just like ours. We're also bringing back the Well of Goodwill so you can donate your in-game wealth and bonds to the charity, which we convert to real cash. You can also buy some special in-game cosmetic items too, courtesy of Solomon's General Store, so keep an eye out for those! It really is lots of fun, all for a wonderful cause! RuneMetrics is an amazing new in-game feature that gives you access to a huge variety of advanced tracking tools. It shows you stats, graphs and additional website features to help you understand all the ins and outs of what your character is doing. This feature really helps you to understand and experiment with your gear, running onscreen, updating as you train, working out the best possible XP, damage and wealth rates and analyzing what you're doing, all of the time! There's advanced XP tracking including an ETA to your next level up. There is also an amazing drop log that tracks everything you've gained through combat, as well as damage calculators giving you your total damage EVER and your average damage per minute, and plenty more on top! Many of these features are free, but if you're the sort of player that wants ALL THE STATS and access to advanced tools that allow you to look at historical data, you'll be able to spend a bond per month for the complete package. Gold Premier Club members get all the features for free for the first 2 weeks, and half price for the rest of the year. Keeping true to our promises about the new skill, we're releasing more content for you to invent and experiment with this month, and we're working on important tweaks and fixes based on your feedback so far. We're adding tools like the crystal pickaxe and hatchet to the list of items you can augment and adding a bunch of perks for skilling via the shiny augmentation table. Perks include "not emptying resource locations when you gain resources", consuming resources for XP and plenty more. From the success that was last year's Death Lotus Training, get stuck into our new Zodiac event for Chinese New Year 2016. The Zodiac event, which gives you a checklist of time-sensitive tasks that you can complete for great rewards, including the dragon zodiac costume. As with last year's event, you can complete the list multiple times for even better rewards, and use stamps to auto complete any tasks you really don't want to do. Welcome to the bumper new RuneScape podcast, absolutely packed with content. This week, listen in for Mod Osborne taking to Lore Corner for a chat about Seren; Mod MattHe talking to Mod Krista about her favourite piece of RuneScape music, and finally for Mod Infinity sitting down with Player Support JMods to talk about all our Community Helper initiatives. Listen now on YouTube, PodBean or iTunes. ---- Our Ninjas have been sneaking about again, this time focussing their attention on some old favourites and on the free game. God books will be able to be worn in the pocket slot and will give bonuses to all combat styles. (Even more so if it's an illuminated god book.) You'll also be able to charge up your god book by consuming pages, with fully charged books able to unleash a special attack themed around that specific god's lieutenant, like Commander Zilyana's lightning-cloud attack if you're using the Saradomin book. It's seriously cool. You told us that in the free game, you'd love a way to sell your members' items to help you buy bonds, so we're adding it! We are also giving free players a taste of bossing by adding the giant mole and the KBD to their choices in combat, adding some combat abilities to help with your combat rotations, and even adding dual wielding. Recently, you've voted in game for us to finally take you to the Eastern Lands! This is something I am particularly excited about, and we would now love to hear your ideas on the sort of content you'd like to experience out there. Whether it's a quest, a skilling update, a minigame, a d+d... anything themed around these mysterious lands - we want to know about it! Take your creative juices straight to RuneLabs and post, or simply "up vote" some of the current ideas to let us know what you like. On Treasure Hunter this month we're bringing back the Valentine's event. This time we're giving you the chance to win petals that unlock all the previous rewards and funky new costumes and items, including the charming masquerade outfits, a goblin butler pet and the Sceptre of Enchantment, which can be charged with petals and gives everyone around you an XP boost! Petals are also earned via training and can be bought on the Grand Exchange. Finally, there will be a new boss hanging around for just one weekend, called the Mimic Boss. It's like a massive treasure chest... but it's alive, and it wants to eat you! There are 4 levels of boss you can fight, with the higher levels offering the best rewards. You can defeat the boss up to 5 times per day, deaths do not count as a failed attempt. More chances are available via Treasure Hunter and I hear there's a new and rare tongue cape to be won! Disgusting. Our 15 day Merch-Store sale is coming to an exciting climax this weekend. Every item that has been 15% off during the promotion will once again be discounted by that amount from 00:00 UTC on 30th January until 23:59 UTC on 31st January. Treat yourself to something nifty! Have fun, and w00ters out!